Hundreds of immigrants convicted of sex crimes should have been deported but instead were released in the U.S. because their homelands refused to take them back, reports the Boston Globe. They are convicted rapists, child molesters, and kidnappers, among “the worst of the worst,” as one law enforcement agency put it. Immigration officials released them without making sure they register with local authorities as sex offenders. Once U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) frees them, agency officials often lose track of them, despite outstanding deportation orders. By law, police are supposed to investigate if sex offenders fail to update their address within days of their release. Local officials said they did not learn that ICE had released the offenders until after the Globe inquired about their cases.
“It's chilling,” said Thomas Dupree, a former deputy assistant U.S. Attorney General who led a 2008 federal court battle to keep one of the offenders locked up. “These are dangerous and predatory individuals who should not be prowling the streets. In fact, they should not be in the United States at all.” The immigration agency does not disclose the names of the immigrants in its custody, to protect their privacy. The Globe obtained the names of thousands of released criminals through a federal lawsuit against ICE, arguing that the privacy policy endangered Americans and immigrants alike. Using the 2008 to 2012 list with names of more than 6,800 criminals, the Globe identified 424 released immigrants who had previously been convicted of sex-related crimes, including 209 who had appeared in the national public sex offender registry.